What happened to putting children’s welfare first?

Virginia Bottomley, who as Health Minister launched the 1989 Children ActCredit:
-/Via alchetron.com

Lawyers have lately been celebrating the 25th anniversary of the coming into force of the 1989 Children Act, hailed when it was introduced as “the most far-reaching and comprehensive reform of child law to have come before Parliament in living memory”. Its central principle, which must since have been paraphrased by lawyers a million times, is that the welfare of the child must be their “paramount consideration”. And in 1993 the Government reported on how splendidly the Act was working in practice.

The report’s preface, signed by Virginia Bottomley, stated that it was now recognised that “the best place for children to grow up in is in their own home with their own family”. This was why the number of children “entering compulsory care” had fallen to 1,600, just a quarter of the previous year’s figure: showing that “a culture of a working relationship with parents is becoming a reality”. The contrast to what has happened since is staggering. The number of children being removed from their families in England has been soaring at such a rate – by a further 23 per cent this year alone – that the total in local authority care is now more than 70,000. And by 2020, it has been estimated by Lord Justice Munby, head of the family courts, new care applications could have doubled again, to 25,000 a year.

Comparing the claims of the government's 1993 report into the working of the 1989 Children Act with what actually goes on in our “child protection” system today, one whistles with disbelief

Comparing the claims of that 1993 report with what actually goes on in our “child protection” system today, one whistles with disbelief. It claimed, for instance, that “a child’s voice must be heard when decisions about their future are being taken”, that “the welfare of children being looked after when away from home” must be “properly safeguarded”, that local authorities must “promote contact” between children in care and their families.

But in all the hundreds of cases I have followed over the years, it would be hard to count how often each of these principles has been outrageously flouted: where judges have refused to allow unhappy children their legal right to express their own wishes in court; where children in care too often suffer far worse abuse than anything alleged against their parents, where loving parents are only allowed “contact” with their children under such dehumanised conditions that it is no more than a horrible ordeal.

Even when grandparents or other family members are only too keen to look after children removed from parents ruled unfit to keep them, social workers and the courts almost invariably prefer to farm them out to the care of strangers, at a cost of £3 billion a year. It is hard to think of any other statute which in practice has been reduced to such a cruel mockery of its original noble intentions.

Leaving the EU with no deal would be a disaster

It has recently become painfully obvious that one of the greatest hidden prices we have paid for our decades of political involvement with “Europe” is the extent to which, in those 40 years, our political class has switched off from trying to understand the immense complexities of the system of government we have increasingly been ruled by. Daily we hear and read politicians and commentators showing that they haven’t begun to grasp the reality of what we are up against, as we try to disentangle ourselves from that labyrinthine system.

Theresa May and Chancellor Philip Hammond are fully aware that dropping out of the single market would be incredibly damaging

Understandable though it may be that Theresa May should keep her cards close to her chest – not least because she and her closest advisers are still on a sharp learning curve as to what “Brexit means Brexit” really means – our starting point must be the single clearest clue she has yet given as to the direction of her thinking. Our aim on leaving the EU, she told the Tory conference, must be to retain “maximum possible access to the European market”, while escaping subservience to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and regaining some “control over immigration”.

This shows that she (and her Chancellor Philip Hammond) are fully aware of what they have been told by the City and many others: that dropping out of the single market would be incredibly damaging. Just to rely, as some wishful thinkers are still urging, on those “WTO rules” which take no account of the regulatory “non-tariff barriers” which would deny us entry to that market, would be catastrophic.

Equally it rules out any idea that, in the two years available, we could somehow negotiate a bespoke free trade deal with the EU, when all precedent shows that this would take far too long and could only give us much less than that “maximum access” to the market Mrs May spoke of.

There really is only one way to achieve her stated aim. That is for Britain to remain in the wider European Economic Area (EEA) and apply to join Norway in the European Free Trade Association (Efta). Those arguing that this would be little different from staying in the EU are clearly unaware that, of the 19,886 laws currently in force in the EU, Efta/EEA members have only to comply with 5,288, barely a quarter, almost all concerned with trade. Nor would we be under the jurisdiction of the ECJ (although Efta’s own court does choose to shadow some ECJ rulings).

The one plan that would work for us to leave the EU is to join Norway in EFTACredit:
Michele Boiero/Alamy

In addition, although much of our immigration has nothing to do with the EU, those countries do also have some right to limit migration from within the EU; and the power to negotiate independent trade deals with countries outside the EU, as Mrs May and her ministers want.

Furthermore, we must realise that, in those two years, our negotiations to leave the EU must cover many issues other than trade. Whatever deal we reach, it will need a “secession treaty” ratified by all other EU members, not dissimilar to the “accession treaties” negotiated by countries wishing to join them. Look on the Europa website at the template for such treaties and they cover 35 separate policy areas, such as agriculture, fisheries, foreign policy and many more, of which only a handful relate to trade.

That as much as anything shows why we need to keep the trade aspects of our Brexit deal as simple as possible, to give enough time for discussion of all those other issues; or we risk the ultimate disaster whereby we drop out of the EU without any deal at all.

Here’s a forecast: the new Met Office computer can’t be any worse

Face of BBC weather Michael FishCredit:
PA Wire

The Met Office trumpets that its £97 million new “supercomputer” will enable it to produce much more accurate forecasts of our weather a year ahead than the rather less super £33 million computer it replaced. Certainly the seasonal and medium-term forecasts of its old computers have long since become a national joke, because they so consistently turned out to be 180 degrees wrong: such as that “barbecue summer” of 2009 when it hardly stopped raining; that “warmer than average” winter of 2010 when December was the coldest on record; or that “drier than average” winter of 2013 which brought Somerset and elsewhere such disastrous floods.

But what was significant about all those faulty old computer models was that they were programmed by the global warming-obsessed Met Office to assume that the chief factor influencing future climate was the rise in CO2. Only now is their new computer programmed to allow for the key part played in shaping weather by shifts in ocean currents, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation.

Flooding in Romford, June 2016Credit:
-/REX/Shutterstock

It has long been apparent that the main reason why so many other official climate models got their predictions so hopelessly wrong was that they were similarly programmed to overlook the influence of such natural factors as ocean currents and solar radiation. Only gradually since 2007, when none of them predicted a temporary fall in global temperatures of 0.7 degrees, equal to their entire net rise in the 20th century, have they been prepared to concede that CO2 was not the real story.

We shall see whether the Met Office’s expensive new toy fares rather better than the junk science of those it replaced.